Robert Moog once described his relationship with electronic equipment as
inhabiting a space "between discovering and witnessing." It was precisely
this blend of effortless genius and geeky, childlike awe that endeared
Moog, who died last month at age 71, to the thousands of musicians who
fell in love with his inventions over the years. The New York native got
his start in the 1950s selling do-it-yourself theremin kits in the back
pages of hobbyist magazines. While working at the Columbia-Princeton
Electronic Music Center in the '60s, he developed the prototype for the
keyboard-operated synthesizer that would become known as the Moog. Over
the ensuing decades, as the size of the Moog shrank from a room to a closet
to a desk, the synthesizer's whimsical sound palette won such fans as the
Beatles, Stevie Wonder, and Kraftwerk. What was unique about Moog was that
he never considered the human and the circuit board to be warring factions.
Instead, he hoped the two would become intimate conspirators, spurring
each other on in pursuit of sounds as sophisticated and far-reaching as
they were beautiful.